Category: Music

If you’ve been following me on social media, you’ve probably seen me posting a lot of updates recently about all the progress I’m making on my next novel, ‘The Unfortunate Expiration of One Mr. David S. Sparks.’ The goal is to have this first draft done by the end of October, so I’ve been cranking through the rough draft and putting down a lot of words to meet my self-imposed deadline. As I’ve mentioned before, I do a lot of my writing to music. It helps me to set the…

As a writer, one of my biggest challenges is keeping my thoughts straight – and determining what story idea works, and which ones don’t. Like most writers, I keep a notebook (or several notebooks) on me, jotting down ideas that come before they have a chance to go. Whether it be in the middle of the night, after a drive (I try not to ever take notes while I’m driving), or smack-dab in the middle of a conversation, putting these thoughts down on paper holds them in permanence so that they…

If you’re at all familiar with me, you know music plays a major part in my life. Besides working in the music industry for the past twenty years, I’m also just a huge music fan. As such, it should come as no surprise that music is a major influence on my writing. Readers of my first novel, ‘The Trouble With Being God: A Philosophical Thriller,’ may recall that throughout that book I had footnotes marking specific songs to play at certain parts of the book. They were there as the…

Great article here from the Guardian about an artist who has been fighting with Grooveshark to get them to finally stop giving her music away for free (without her permission) – once and for all. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t go so well for the musician. It started when I tried searching for songs I’ve cowritten. Amazingly, I found almost every song I’ve ever released – even songs in Swedish. Now, to clarify, Grooveshark does not have a licence to feature any of these songs, and they don’t pay me anything….

Had they bothered to read my book, Starving the Artist, this wouldn’t have really been all that shocking. I have an entire section on Grooveshark – including public tweets they sent out to me that basically said the exact same thing years ago. Judging from internal emails, Grooveshark opted for forgiveness. In a April 27, 2010 email to Sina Simantob, a Escape Media Group director, Andrew B. Lipsher, then a partner at private equity firm Greycroft Partners, explained that he understands "the ask forgiveness and not permission strategy. It is…

Told you so. Ultimately, we’ve all been stuck in some collaborative hallucination believing ad-supported music can work. It’s yet another indictment of the ad-supported model — the one Last.fm and Pandora have found problematic. Many have tried, yet nobody has really managed to make it work, because advertising isn’t enough to pay licensing fees across millions and millions of on-demand tracks. via Spotify Shift Signals the End for Ad-Supported Music: Tech News and Analysis «.

“Criminal activity online is everyday eroding the work of America’s economy and workforce,” said NMPA President and CEO David Israelite. “Songwriters and music publishers stand with the millions of Americans whose work depends on our nation’s founding principle of intellectual property rights to support efforts to address this illegal activity. via Mi2N.com – Music Publishers Support Congressional Call For Enforcement Tools To Combat Digital Theft.